A New Visions Commentary
paper published April 2004 by The National Center for Public
Policy Research. Reprints permitted provided source is credited.

Environmentalists like playing the race
card, but they make a dreadful mistake.

They don't play with a full deck.

"Environmental justice" is a
term green activists use to demonize businesses and complain that
the government isn't doing enough to help minorities. Their premise
is simple: They believe businesses are using political power to
unfairly put polluting factories predominately in minority neighborhoods.

The problem: These green groups aren't
helping minorities. In fact, the regulations that come as a result
of their agenda cause harm.

A clean environment is important, but
so are a job and a home. The environmentalist agenda is often
pitted against the bread-and-butter issues facing most Americans.
Even when green activists invoke compassion for downtrodden minorities,
their policies perpetuate poverty.

Global warming is a good example of environmentalist
absurdity. They support regulating American industry to reduce
the emission of alleged "greenhouse gases" that may
or may not be resulting in a dramatic heating of the atmosphere
(there's no conclusive proof of this theory, and many reputable
scientists scoff at the greens' scare stories).

Environmentalist support of the Kyoto
Protocol, a UN plan to "reduce" global warming, reveals
a perverse commitment to minority well-being. According to a study
commissioned by the National Black Chamber of Commerce and other
minority organizations, the Kyoto Protocol could make approximately
864,000 blacks and 511,000 Hispanics jobless in the United States
while reducing the wages of those minorities still working by
about ten percent. Other studies predict gas prices would rise
another 66 cents a gallon, electricity bills would rise almost
$2,000 a year and a house would cost 21 percent more to buy.

Speaking of housing, these same environmentalists
support "smart growth" restrictions on building new
homes. In Richland County, South Carolina, restrictions fighting
"urban sprawl" prevent black farmers, whose families
have owned their land since the end of the Civil War, from selling
their land. This policy even stops these families from dividing
their land among their own children!

An econometric study commissioned by The
National Center for Public Policy Research found that, had the
entire nation followed Portland, Oregon's environmentalist-endorsed
policies of restricting new home construction in the 1990s, there
would be a million fewer homeowners today.

Included in that figure are approximately
260,000 black homeowners who might not have been able to buy the
homes they live in today. By restricting the quantity of new homes
and driving up the prices of existing ones, smart growth essentially
becomes a new form of segregation. Yet these neo-segregationist
policies remain popular with environmentalists.

Norris McDonald of the African-American
Environmentalists Association recently asked the 25 biggest environmental
groups to describe their hiring practices and involvement in minority
communities. Only four groups gave him the dignity of a response.
Among those not responding were Greenpeace, the Sierra Club and
Defenders of Wildlife. McDonald says their silence "conveys
the appearance that there are discriminatory practices being shielded
from public view."

A study commissioned by the Natural Resources
Council last year found that only six percent of the staff members
of 60 green groups surveyed are black (only three percent are
Hispanic). In the case of the League of Conservation Voters, McDonald
said, he was "not aware of one minority professional ever
working at LCV in its almost 30-year history."

This is the same LCV that issued a 2001
congressional "report card" listing votes for liberal
abortion policies and increased campaign finance regulation as
pro-environment votes while not even listing the "Brownfields
Revitalization Act," which provided federal funding and streamlined
procedures for cleaning polluted sites in predominately inner
city areas, as an environmental vote worth commenting upon. To
the LCV, it's apparently more important to keep abortion as birth
control in minority communities than it is to make it easier to
clean polluted inner-city neighborhoods, create inner city jobs
and provide new services.

Environmental organizations like the color
green, in all its forms. Other colors apparently don't interest
them at all.

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(David Almasi is director of
the African-American leadership network Project 21. Comments many
be sent to [email protected].)

Note: New Visions Commentaries reflect the views of their author,
and not necessarily those of Project 21.